Is your Web Store Ready for the 2018 Holiday Shopping Season?

For online retailers, the most wonderful time of the year has already arrived.
The gift-giving season is almost upon us, which means companies selling online goods are gearing up to prepare their promotional calendars, website dressing and online marketing strategies for the holiday season. It’s time for smart “eCommers” to capitalize on the most profitable quarter of the selling season. Is your holiday strategy ready to meet the demand of the gift-giving season crush?
Last year’s holiday season was a historic cash windfall for the eCommerce industry. According to a report from Shopify, here’s the statistical breakdown from 2017’s holiday bonanza:

•  $1 billion every day Nov. 1-22
•  $1.52 billion on Thanksgiving
•  $5 billion on Black Friday
•  $6.6 billion on Cyber Monday
•  $108.15 billion overall

As the eCommerce world has visions of net profit dancing in their heads, here are some pertinent items that online retailers need to lock in to knock it out of the park this holiday season.

DISCOUNTS AND PROMOTIONS ABOUND!

It’s expected to be a holiday full of varying promotional offers and deep discounts from brands. Email inboxes will be stuffed like stockings, brimming with promotional emails. Flash sales and savings events will be popping up in news feeds across social media. Everywhere you look online, a digital ad will be following you touting deep discounts, BOGOs and beyond.
By now, companies should be in the process of outlining and strategizing what discounts make the most sense for their bottom line. For instance, a 50% off discount doesn’t really work for a company with high margins of operation. The goal is to find the promotional offer that best suits your financial needs and also resonates with your very specific customer base.
Here are a few important questions retail professionals should be asking themselves about their promotional strategy:

• What promotions did we run earlier in the year that had our customers responding in droves? Can we capitalize and put a different spin on an old favorite?
• Have we dug into the online community and researched what top retailers are doing this holiday season to blow performance out of the water?
• Are we locking in one big promotion from November and beyond? Are we orchestrating a myriad of offers (Think “12 Days of Savings!”) during different times of the season?
• Do we have an eCommerce platform in place that supports more complex promotional offers such as “buy-one-get-one” or “free gift with a purchase of $X“? It’s important to make sure your eCommerce platform can support promotions that savvy online shoppers are expecting.

It’s time to lock in that very important promotional calendar. Once you are primed and ready on which promotional ideas make the most sense for your brand, it’s time to focus on how you’re going to advertise these efforts in a concise but tantalizing fashion. Which brings us to…

HOW WILL YOUR DIGITAL MEDIA STRATEGY IMPACT YOUR HOLIDAY SALES?

How you digitally represent your brand during the holiday season is paramount to overall success in Q4. Visually and textually, are your ads going the “jingle bells and bows” route as December approaches? Are your Black Friday ads following the recent brand trend of going “all black” with a sleek cool design where the promotion does the talking? Which digital channels will make up the composition of your multi-channel approach? How is your Cost to Acquire a Customer (CAC) different from what it’s been the previous 9 months?
If you’re lucky enough to have dedicated account managers specific to whichever digital media channels you are employing (Facebook, Google Ads, retargeting efforts, etc.), it’s time to pick their brains and have them help drive your holiday digital strategy.
An important facet of advertising online during peak holiday season is how the cost to advertise is going to drastically change. The chances are that your dedicated account rep doesn’t have access to a crystal ball. But what they do have, is historical data and a feel for the volatile online marketplace. Now is the time to have as many conversations with your account rep as you can to ensure that you’re budgeting how much it’s going to take to get in front of ravenous holiday shoppers this season. CPMs and CPCs are about to drastically rise. The cost to advertise is going to be skyrocketing in less than 30 days. Your dedicated account manager is having these discussions internally with their teams about their advertising platforms during the holidays. Press them for guidance. It’s imperative to ensure that you’re doing enough with your digital budgets and bids to get out in front of shoppers during this peak time.

IS YOUR WEB STORE STILL NOT MOBILE RESPONSIVE?

The 2017 holiday season saw mobile shopping at an all-time high, accounting for 52% of total sales. It’s an on-the-go world and shoppers are reaching for their mobile devices at an astronomical rate to bring home the perfect holiday gifts. Simply put, if you’ve stalled on making your web store mobile-responsive, you are at risk of serving up a holiday shopping experience that may be clunky and hard-to-navigate for shoppers.
Cyber Monday 2017 produced $2 billion in mobile shopping revenue, with smartphones accounting for over 37% of Cyber Monday purchases. With the use of mobile payment services like Google Wallet, PayPal and Apple Pay on the rise, its expected that 2018 will improve upon that overall number. If you haven’t embraced the idea of a mobile responsive web store, you may be running out of time. Magento and Shopify are two noteworthy eCommerce platform providers who include built-in mobile features with their services. It’s never too late to upgrade your Ecommerce platform to the experience that makes the most sense for your customers. If your site isn’t up-to-date with the expectations of a smart online shopping world, this could impact your holiday season success.
Good luck with your efforts and promotions this holiday season!